Clean install with upgrade disk reformatting question

I have a laptop which has been giving me a hard time lately, and I need to reinstall windows 7 (for the 4th time in 1.2 years). I have never reformatted it before and all I have is the windows 7 upgrade disk that came with it (I got it back in September when all of those free upgrade deals were going on, it originally had vista.) I read that you can have activation issues after formatting the hard drive while installing using the upgrade disc. I think Microsoft let you do it if your email them to activate it, but I'm not sure and I don't know where you would do this. Since I don't feel like formatting it, installing vista, and then reinstalling 7, can anyone help?

richc46 said:

We frown on double posting.

sorry, but as my issue falls into two categories I wasn't sure which to put it into